A hair washing has been known as one of the typical person's head cares. In the hairdressing and beauty industry, the laborious head and/or hair washing has been desired to be automated. Also in the medicare industry, the laborious hair washing services for the inpatients have been expected to be automated.
JP 2002-136331 (A) discloses an automatic hair washing apparatus which washes a person's head with hot water by jetting the hot water to the head.
FIGS. 15A and 15B are explanatory views for explaining an automatic hair washing apparatus according to prior art disclosed in JP 2002-136331 (A). FIG. 15A is a cross-sectional view of the automatic hair washing apparatus at the time of hair washing, and FIG. 15B is the cross-sectional view of the automatic hair washing apparatus at the time of washing the occipital region of the head.
As shown in FIG. 15A, the automatic hair washing apparatus has a hair washing basin 1 into which the person's head is inserted, has shower nozzles 2, mounted on an inner wall of the hair washing basin 1, for jetting water, etc., on the hair of the occipital and temporal regions of the person's head, has an overhead shower nozzle 3 for jetting water, etc., on the hair of the frontal region thereof, and has an occipital region supporter 4.
When the occipital region of the head is washed by the automatic hair washing apparatus, the occipital region supporter 4, having supported the occipital region of the person's head, is tilted down, and then the occipital region thereof with which the occipital region supporter 4 has contacted is washed manually whilst a user or an operator, of the apparatus supports the person's head by hand.
In accordance with the automatic hair washing apparatus as shown in FIGS. 15A and 15B, the hair washing is performed by the hot water, etc., being jetted on the person's head from the shower nozzles 2, in a state that the occipital region of the person's head is put on the occipital region supporter 4. With this apparatus, because the hair on the person's head can be washed automatically, its manual labor can be saved.
Disadvantageously, in the conventional automatic hair washing apparatus as shown in FIGS. 15A and 15B, the occipital region of the person's head is supported on the occipital region supporter 4, and the part of the head which contacts the supporter 4, can not be washed by the jetting of water. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 15B, it is necessary to manually wash the occipital region which contacts the occipital region supporter 4, whilst the user of the apparatus supports the person's head by his/her own hand. The weight of a person's head is about 5 kg, and to support the person's head by hand at the time of washing the occipital region of the head becomes a physically big burden on the user. Here, in order to reduce the user's burden, if the occipital region thereof is washed manually in a state that the occipital region is supported on the occipital region supporter 4, then the part of the head which has been supported on the supporter 4 remains unwashed.
The present invention is to solve such a problem of hair washing, and provide an automatic head care apparatus or an automatic head care method for automatically caring a part of the occipital region, which is supported on the occipital region supporter.